


See You Later

by Psuedo_sweetheart



Category: When The Night Comes (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27363988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psuedo_sweetheart/pseuds/Psuedo_sweetheart
Summary: Two short stories, one about a brush with despair and loss, the other about an unprepared for ending.  The first half is the same for both of them."As it is, he swallows down the urge to sink his teeth into her, so she can never be taken away from him.  Instead he focuses on the weight and warmth of her, reminding himself how he treasures the parts of her he’d have to destroy to keep her.This is a facet of being a better man he’s never had to face before.  He’s treasured his other lovers and grieved when their time ended, but he never let himself get this attached before, never been forced to acknowledge this incredibly selfish part of himself that refuses to let go.  Not before he’s ready."
Relationships: Hunter/Finnegan Kazimir
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	See You Later

“See you later, alligator,” Rio sing songs at him.

She’s gripping the door jamb, her wedding ring glinting in the candle light as she grins her goodbye; on her way to another day cooped up in the office. 

From where he’s lounging on the bed, Finn playfully gnashes his teeth at her.

“Do you want to play alligator wrestler tonight?” he purrs.

She laughs, loud and surprised, but a flush is growing on the apples of her cheeks as well, and Finn waggles his eyebrows at her, unable to resist the chance to wreck her composure just before work. 

As he’d hoped, she breaks and comes striding back to tackle him, giggling as he grabs her and kisses her thoroughly. Her hair is slightly mussed, lips red and pouty, when she pulls away, evading his grasping hands.

“You are way too clingy to be a good alligator,” she teases. 

“Clingy,” Finn pouts.

“Yep,” she says, looking so smug he falls in love with her all over again for at least the hundredth time since the first time. 

The empty place in his chest has felt full and warm, and alive ever since she stepped foot in Lunaris, and he’s the luckiest man dead or alive, to be loved by her. As he leans against the pile of pillows at his back, Finn knows the smile on his face is sappy and only proving her point, but he can’t find it in him to care in the slightest. 

“I love you, Rio.”

Her expression softens into something that matches his own half ridiculous love and longing, and this time when she steps forward to kiss him, he lets her have her way with him. One hand in his hair, the other along his jaw; her emotions, inspired by him, and shared with him. The rest of the world fades away, leaving only the two of them, and the love they can make, just like this. 

“I love you, Finn Kazimir,” she says softly against his lips. “I-”

An obnoxious, buzzing noise fills the room and she jerks like she’s been zapped by August’s magic, which isn’t that far from the truth. 

“Dammit!” she curses, as she fishes her pocket watch out of her trouser pocket. 

It had been a promotion gift from August, who had ‘helpfully’ added some sort of alarm to let her know when she was beyond late and heading into, ‘your boss is going to set you on fire,’ territory. 

“Gotta go!”

Rio dashes across the room, “See you later, cutest, cuddliest alligator, I ever did see,” she sings.

The door slams shut and Finn chuckles to himself in the sudden silence before going back to his book.

  
The sun is only just descending from it’s zenith, and Clan Kazimir is in the midst of discussing the possibility of newly turned vampire joining, when Finn’s head snaps up from the letter he was reading, nostrils flaring.

All conversation ceases as the smell of blood and ozone fills the catacombs, followed by the sound trudging boots. Finn is on his feet and heading toward the entrance before a single coherent thought goes through his head. 

August’s eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot, the smell of magic so strong on them, it almost overpowers the scent of blood.

“Finnegan.”

Their voice is hoarse, like they’d been screaming, and Finn can’t tear his gaze away from August’s; can’t speak, or think, or move.

“I’m so sor-”

“Where is she?” Finn finally remembers how to make his mouth work.

When August doesn’t reply, he steps closer, feels the black start to bleed into his eyes.

“Where is she?!”

He’s yelling, as if it can make up for how he can’t tremble, can’t feel his heart racing like his feet want to, if only he knew where to go. Instead, August is the one trembling and weeping, and Finn has never hated a human being so much in his entire six hundred years of life. He wants to grab them and shake answers out of them. He wants to tear them apart for being able to shake and weep while he just stands here with no way to let go of the emotions threatening the threads of humanity he’s woven; only realizing as they creak against the weight of his fear, just how fragile they are. 

“August, I swear-”

“She told me not to come.”

Finn’s mouth is hanging open, and it feels like he’s been turned on his head and turned inside out both at once.

“What?” he whispers.

“She’s in headquarters. It was an- an assassin. Because of the changes. But Finn,” August covers their eyes with their arm, their lips pulled back from their teeth as they force the words out past a sob, “She can’t be moved, and she’s- Ezra’s making her… as comfortable as he can.”

Finn moves to brush by August, but his hand is caught in a small, yet firm grip. 

His eyes close, and he hangs his head.

“Raven. Let go.”

“No.”

There’s no teasing lilt to her voice, nothing but a steely determination he recognizes as his own need to not be left alone. 

August turns, stumbling back into the light, back to where the real people live and laugh and weep and bleed till they die. 

Meanwhile, Raven pulls and keeps pulling on his arm till he sits with her on the dirt floor of a darkened tunnel, guttering candles illuminating the unflinching grins of the skulls that used to amuse him but now only look like a vicious vision of the future. She wraps her arms around him while Fiero sits on his other side and they wait, the dripping water ticking down time that means nothing to creatures such as them, and everything to those on the surface of the earth. 

He can feel the moon, just as he can feel the sun still on the horizon when the trap door opens. He stands, but then freezes in place; still as a graveside monument, still as the surface of the moon, still as any human who dreads death.

Two figures, one of them carrying the other, wrapped up in a blanket, and all he can smell is the searing lightning of magic, underscored by blood, and if he had a heart it would be crumbling, twisting until it exploded in his chest.

  
“I’m afraid no alligator wrestling tonight.”

Her soft voice has him rushing forward with a punched out sound of strangled joy and relief, lifting her from Alkar’s arms as gently as he can when he’s so, so, fucking scared. 

“Rio,” he whispers, “my love, my love.”

He can taste the blood in her mouth when he kisses her, but this time it doesn’t rouse him, doesn’t do anything but make him blink rapidly as if he had tears to blink away, his grip on her tightening. 

Alkar clears his throat before speaking.

“I didn’t understand the details, but we should of known this one is hardier than most,“ he jokes.

“It’s Ezra’s fault,” Rio grouses without heat, “he nearly killed himself saving me.”

When Finn tenses, and she goes on, placing an unusually cold, but still gentle hand on his arm.

“He’ll be okay. He just needs some bed-rest.”

He exhales a whoosh of air from his lungs, nodding stiffly because there are no words for how grateful he is for Ezra’s boundless heart. 

He bows his head over Rio till their foreheads touch, “I thought I’d lost you. I thought-” 

He stops, realizing he can’t actually say what he thought out loud, can’t put those words out in a world where she’s alive and warm in his arms. 

“Take me to bed?” she asks tiredly, tucking her head against his chest.

“Yes,” he’s already turning, heading toward their bedroom. He pauses a moment.

“Thank you, Alkar.”

The half-lycan nods, not even bothering with trying to find words, just tiredly giving his usual casual wave.

  
Once they reach the room, Finn holds her in one arm briefly as he tugs down the rumpled bed linens, then sets her down on the bed. He makes her point out her wound, so he knows what to avoid before pulling up the blankets and tucking her in. She’s already fading as he slides under the covers with her, drawing her close and burying his nose in her hair.

“Rio?” he murmurs.

“Mm?”

“What were you going to say this morning? Before your alarm went off.”

He has to know. He almost never had the chance to ask, almost faced a future where he would always be waiting in agony for her to finish the thought. 

It’s difficult to wait even now, difficult to realize she might not even remember, while it’s been pulling him apart for hours.

“Hmm…” she makes a thoughtful noise, likely to reassure him she’s thinking about it, not just falling asleep. 

Her hand grasps his arm, and it’s finally warm again, and something unclenches in his chest. Finn swallows, moving to press a kiss to the sacred place between her neck and shoulder. The spot on her body that holds so many powerful memories, each one held equally sacred in his memory, along with her smile, the sound of her helpless belly laugh, and the two times she’d let him see her cry, and comfort her. 

Her breathing changes, and his ears prick, his entire body listening as she opens her mouth.

“I was going to say, that I think loving you is the best thing I’ve ever done,” her fingers tighten slightly on his arm, “I’m sorry. I should have made sure-”

“Don’t,” he interrupts, the steadiness of his voice surprising him.

“You don’t need to apologize for treating today like it was just like every other day. I couldn’t bear it if you acted-” 

He takes a deep, emotionally necessary breath, so he can push the words from his mouth.

“If you acted like you might not come back every time you left, I’d never be able to let you go.”

Rio makes a soft noise of understanding, and he can tell by her breathing the embrace of sleep is pulling her under, so he goes quiet. 

Once her breathing evens out, he runs his hand over her hair, and down the line of her spine, over and over again in a soothing rhythm.

In the midst of his attempts to ward off her nightmares and reassure himself he isn’t currently in one because she's alive, she's alive, she's alive, Finn thinks about locking her in one of the many rooms in the catacombs. He thinks about chaining her to the bed as he’s joked about countless times, about… turning her. Keeping her safe, keeping her with him, forever, and ever and ever, even if he has to capture and tear her apart to do it. 

He won’t. It’s barely even a temptation when he thinks it through, just a reaction to facing the terror of losing her. A terror he’s still too deep in to even feel shame for thinking what he’s thinking. 

“I can’t lose you,” he whispers into the darkness.

He cradles her head against his body, feeling like he could tremble with how fragile she is in his arms. How easy it would be for him, for anyone, to snap her bones, to crush her organs, to tear her to pieces, transforming her from human to nothing but food for the earth and its creatures. 

If he had a heart it would be pounding in his chest right now. If he had a heart, he would be better able to understand how dangerous this line of thought is for him right now.

As it is, he swallows down the urge to sink his teeth into her, so she can never be taken away from him. Instead he focuses on the weight and warmth of her, reminding himself how he treasures the parts of her he’d have to destroy to keep her. 

This is a facet of being a better man he’s never had to face before. He’s treasured his other lovers and grieved when their time ended, but he never let himself get this attached before, never been forced to acknowledge this incredibly selfish part of himself that refuses to let go. Not before he’s ready. 

With Rio, he’ll never be ready. They could have centuries, millenniums, eons, and he’d want more. Time itself could unravel around them, and he knows he’d want to look into her eyes as they died together, wishing with his last flash of thought, for one more fraction of a second. 

Finn wishes he could weep, wishes he could shake and feel so sick with guilt his stomach rebels and sends him to his knees, forcing him spill his guts. But those are human reactions, things that are beyond him and have been for so many centuries he should be used to it by now, but somehow he isn’t. 

His thoughts flit to Harry for the first time in a long time. Wonders if he was watching James sleep with bandages stained red when he decided monstrous action needed to be taken to save what is precious. If so, he understands; even more than he thought he would. 

“I love you so much, it threatens to undo me,” he confesses. “And I’m so crazy with it, it doesn’t even scare me.”

His arms tighten around her, “Would it scare you?”

It wouldn’t. He already knows it wouldn’t, and telling her how he’s thought about holding her down and never letting go, would only make her face soften in sympathetic understanding. No one knows better than she does, how love can make monsters of men, just as much as fear, just as much as hatred. 

  
Eventually, Finn feels the earth turn till the sun faces them again. 

Rio stirs in his arms.

“Go back to sleep,” he says softly, stroking her hair, “you’re safe with me.”

She does. 

She is. 

  
***

  
“See you later, alligator,” Rio sing songs at him.

She’s gripping the door jamb, her wedding ring glinting in the candle light as she grins her goodbye; on her way to another day cooped up in the office. 

From where he’s lounging on the bed, Finn playfully gnashes his teeth at her.

“Do you want to play alligator wrestler tonight?” he purrs.

She laughs, loud and surprised, but a flush is growing on the apples of her cheeks as well, and Finn waggles his eyebrows at her, unable to resist the chance to wreck her composure just before work. 

As he’d hoped, she breaks and comes striding back to tackle him, giggling as he grabs her and kisses her thoroughly. Her hair is slightly mussed, lips red and pouty, when she pulls away, evading his grasping hands.

“You are way too clingy to be a good alligator,” she teases. 

“Clingy,” Finn pouts.

“Yep,” she says, looking so smug he falls in love with her all over again for at least the hundredth time since the first time. 

The empty place in his chest has felt full and warm, and alive ever since she stepped foot in Lunaris, and he’s the luckiest man dead or alive, to be loved by her. As he leans against the pile of pillows at his back, Finn knows the smile on his face is sappy and only proving her point, but he can’t find it in him to care in the slightest. 

“I love you, Rio.”

Her expression softens into something that matches his own half ridiculous love and longing, and this time when she steps forward to kiss him, he lets her have her way with him. One hand in his hair, the other along his jaw; her emotions, inspired by him, and shared with him. The rest of the world fades away, leaving only the two of them, and the love they can make, just like this. 

“I love you, Finn Kazimir,” she says softly against his lips. “I-”

An obnoxious, buzzing noise fills the room and she jerks like she’s been zapped by August’s magic, which isn’t that far from the truth. 

“Dammit!” she curses, as she fishes her pocket watch out of her trouser pocket. 

It had been a promotion gift from August, who had ‘helpfully’ added some sort of alarm to let her know when she was beyond late and heading into, ‘your boss is going to set you on fire,’ territory. 

“Gotta go!”

Rio dashes across the room, “See you later, cutest, cuddliest alligator, I ever did see,” she sings.

The door slams shut and Finn chuckles to himself in the sudden silence before going back to his book.

  
The sun is only just descending from it’s zenith, and Clan Kazimir is in the midst of discussing the possibility of newly turned vampire joining, when Finn’s head snaps up from the letter he was reading, nostrils flaring.

All conversation ceases as the smell of blood and ozone fills the catacombs, followed by the sound trudging boots. Finn is on his feet and heading toward the entrance before a single coherent thought goes through his head. 

August’s eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot, the smell of magic so strong on them, it almost overpowers the scent of blood.

“Finnegan.”

Their voice is hoarse, like they’d been screaming, and Finn can’t tear his gaze away from August’s; can’t speak, or think, or move.

“I’m so sor-”

“Where is she?” Finn finally remembers how to make his mouth work.

When August doesn’t reply, he steps closer, feels the black start to bleed into his eyes.

“Where is she?!”

He’s yelling, as if it can make up for how he can’t tremble, can’t feel his heart racing like his feet want to, if only he knew where to go.

Instead, August is the one trembling and weeping, and Finn has never hated a human being so much in his entire six hundred years of life. 

He wants to grab them and shake answers out of them. He wants to tear them apart for being able to shake and weep while he just stands here with no way to let go of the emotions threatening the threads of humanity he’s woven; only realizing as they creak against the weight of his fear, just how fragile they are. 

“August, I swear-”

“She told me not to come.”

Finn’s mouth is hanging open, and it feels like he’s been turned on his head and turned inside out both at once.

“What?” he whispers.

“She’s in headquarters. It was an- an assassin. Because of the changes. But Finn,” August covers their eyes with their arm, their lips pulled back from their teeth as they force the words out past a sob, “She can’t be moved, and she’s- Ezra’s making her… as comfortable as he can.”

Finn moves to brush by August, but his hand is caught in a small, yet firm grip. 

His eyes close, and he hangs his head.

“Raven. Let go.”

“No.”

There’s no teasing lilt to her voice, nothing but a steely determination he recognizes as his own need to not be left alone. 

August turns, stumbling back into the light, back to where the real people live and laugh and weep and bleed till they die. 

Meanwhile, Raven pulls and keeps pulling on his arm till he sits with her on the dirt floor of a darkened tunnel, guttering candles illuminating the unflinching grins of the skulls that used to amuse him, but now only look like a vicious vision of the future. She wraps her arms around him while Fiero sits on his other side, and they wait, the dripping water ticking down time that means nothing to creatures such as them, and everything to those on the surface of the earth. 

He can feel the moon, just as he can feel the sun still on the horizon when the trap door opens. He stands, but then freezes in place; still as a graveside monument, still as the surface of the moon, still as any human who dreads death.

Two figures, one of them carrying the other, wrapped up in a blanket, and all he can smell is the searing lightning of magic, underscored by blood, and if he had a heart it would be crumbling, twisting until it exploded in his chest.

  
Alkar’s wolf ears are flat against his head, his face streaked with tears, and he swallows thickly before speaking.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

Finn doesn’t speak. His arms reach out for her body, and its so light as Alkar shifts her into his arms and steps back. It’s so light, like she’d been born with hollow bones and feathers and it was the sheer amount of life in her that given her weight. 

“Ezra did everything he could. He- August is with him, making sure he stays in bed. He wanted to come, but-” he shakes his head, grimacing, “He’ll be okay, he just needs rest.”

Finn doesn’t know what to do. Rio’s body is empty and cold in his arms, and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do.

An awful haunting noise starts ringing in his ears, and it isn’t till Alkar grips his arm, and Raven throws her arms around him again, that he realizes it’s coming from him. Fiero’s presence is sitting like bedrock behind his own crumbling mind; the three of them holding him together.

“Rio,” he says her name, then whispers it over and over, like a mantra, a poem of mindless of grief, a prayer that will never be answered. Because he doesn’t know what else to do. What can he do besides call out the only part of her he has left, carry it in his mouth and on his tongue and lips, till the sun falls from the sky?

‘Finn,’ Fiero’s voice penetrates his mind, and his mad litany screeches to a halt. 

Alkar is gone, and Raven is looking up at him, her eyes wide and terrified like the night she died in his arms.

Gently, Fiero pulls Rio’s body from his arms, and Raven takes a hesitant step toward him, a hitched breath escaping her lips when he pulls her close to fill them. 

They don’t speak. They don’t need to. They just hold on to each other as tight as they can. 

It’s cold. And quiet. 

Finn wishes he didn’t notice.

“Promise,” Raven breaks the silence, her voice wavering, “promise me, you won’t go where I can’t follow. Promise you love me too much to leave me.”

Her arms tighten around him when he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know if he can. He wants to promise. He wants to be that good of a man, that good of a father. But he doesn’t know if he can be. Not when the world has never looked colder, or emptier, his future spreading out before him like an abyss filled with grief and loneliness that lap at its edges in an endless rhythm that sings of his inevitable insanity. 

He doesn’t- he can’t. Right now he can’t. Today, he can’t. 

He swallows back his denials before daring to speak.

“I can’t promise that today. But maybe,” he tightens his arms around her, a distant emotion of gratitude for her existence threading through his grief. “Maybe… if tomorrow comes- maybe then.”

She nods immediately, fiercely, as she buries her face against his chest. 

“Okay. But I’ll be by your side every moment till you can promise.”

“Okay,” he says.

  
The funeral is held at night, the moon a bare sliver in the sky, clouds dark and heavy with snow hanging over their heads.

It’s small, held in the same glen where Finn had slid a ring on her finger and promised to love her till the end of time. 

All the same people are here. Minus one. 

August speaks, their voice wavering as they tell a story they all know, of how Rio strode into Lunaris with her beaming grin, and kind heart, and saved them all. 

Raven is holding one hand, Ezra the other, although his fingers still tremble from magical exhaustion. Finn pulls him a little closer, squeezing his hand tighter as the casket is lowered into the cold, dark, ground. Ezra’s pulse and breathing are his anchor, a reminder that the whole of the earth isn’t actually a tomb. 

Piper’s lips are trembling as she pours out an ale over the casket.

“Freebie,” she chokes out, “From Edna and me.”

August holds her as she steps back, tears streaking down their face. Alkar and Omen step forward, their hands white knuckled where they grip each other. 

“All we have are our thanks. For your bravery that will grace history books, and your friendship that will last in our memories till time comes for us as well,” Omen says before gently tossing his handful of dirt into the grave.

“Thanks for believing me, even when I told you not to,” Alkar says, his voice tight with suppressed tears. 

He drops his handful of dirt, and stares at where it falls till Omen softly tugs him away.

Ezra lets go of Finn’s hand and steps forward on wobbly legs, waving off the vampire’s attempt to help him.

“I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t want me to apologize, but I have to. I have to because I couldn’t save you and I-” he breaks off, sucking in a sharp breath, “and I’m so sorry. I’m-” 

His lips press into a tight line, and sifts his fingers through the pile of dirt from the grave before grabbing a handful.

“You were exactly what we all needed, when we needed it most, and you’ll never be forgotten. Thank you Rio. Thank you for everything.”

He lets the dirt slip from his fingers, pushing himself to his feet and dusting his hands off on his robes.

Raven steps forward with Lux, stooping to grab a handful of dirt before she speaks.

“Remember the first time I called you ‘mom’ as a joke, and you burst into tears? I nearly shit myself. I thought I had fucked up so bad, but then you squeezed me so hard I thought my head was going to pop right off, laughing while you cried and I thought you were a perfect damn loony. Perfect for our damn loony family. You were a great-” she stops and Lux squeezes her hand.

“You were a great mom, and a greater friend.”

She holds her arm out over the grave and lets the dirt fall like a rain shower, “Thanks Rio.”

Lux echoes her, tossing another handful of dirt.

Finally Finn stands at the side of the grave, staring down at the pile of dirt on top of the casket. 

“I know you’re not here. Not down in that hole, not in or on the earth at all; not with us. I can’t say that’s okay. I can’t say I’ll be okay without you here. But I do want to be. You-” he pauses a moment, “You loved our little misfit family so much and so well; it’s the least I can do, to follow the path you wanted to walk, in your stead.”

He bows his head, a handful of earth clenched in his fist.

“Thank you for sharing your heart with me. Thank you for the memories I carry forward with me. Thank you, for being so wholly, and beautifully, you.”

Finn releases the dirt from his fingers.

“Good bye Rio, my love.”


End file.
